Totally, I agree. But there’s more at stake than just the perception of who won, and who didn’t. See my post above about what the REAL issue is now (in opinion I would add of course). The real issue now is how big of a mini Rwanda are we gonna let happen? That’s where our conscience is at now.
How does staying in Iraq change the scale of this clusterfuck? Leave now, leave later, the same millions are going to die, and the same destabilzation occurs. For what possible gain are you crossing your fingers?
Except there are no lifeboats, and you’d be on another ship without fuel or food shooting any of the Titanic passengers who swim nearby; the analogy for your silly superbase plan. You keep demanding that I come up with a way to “win” in Iraq; whether you like it or not, “There is none” is a perfectly valid answer.
And given that one of your proposals was to lure the Iranians into a war of mutual slaughter with the Iraqis, I really have trouble with imagining you as nobly helping women and children to the lifeboats. Judging from this thread, you’d hold the ladies off at gunpoint while you and the first class passengers sailed away.
“Let” it be ? What makes you think I, or America in general, has any say on the matter ?
Good question. In answer to that specific question, it’s my position that the U.S. (and the Coaltion) won the battles, and lost pretty well most everything else sadly. Seemingly, the British have done a pretty good job down Basra way - a bit dicey, and Kurdistan has worked out well due to the goodwill left over from Gulf War v.1991, but the massive lack of soldiers on the ground has resulted in a middle region which is essentially anarchy now, and that makes me very sad.
We all have 20/20 vision with hindsight of course, but I don’t like playing that game. I just try to keep moving forward. Hence, if your specific question was “How can we make the best of the cluster fuck of what’s left, as of today’s date?” Well that’s the question I’ve been referring to in my posts thus far.
To be fair, I was wearing my Machiavelli hat when I made that earlier toungue in cheek suggestion. With hindsight, not a wise one because the thread has gotten very much into real world specifics now. But make no mistake. There’s a reason why Vietnam was sucked into Cambodia after the fall of Saigon. It could still happen with Iran, or Syria, or perhaps even Turkey.
I’d rather be proactive than let fate deal the cards as they fall. If the US pulls out now, totally, then we’re gonna see hundreds of thousands of deaths I’m predicting. This debate, right here, right now, is my particular effort at not letting that sit on my conscience.
To answer your question, Boo, before we send in another 800,000 or more troops, I’d like some assurance they’re going to accomplish something more than just make Iraq a more target-rich environment for the people killing Americans. So a credible plan first and then we’ll talk about manning it. (Although I’m also curious where you plan to get 800,000 more troops and the logistics to support them, but that’s a seperate issue.)
It isn’t up to us to win. It isn’t our country. It’s theirs. Shouldn’t you be asking what it would take for the *Iraqis * to win?
Unfortunately, I doubt you’d get the same answer from the 3 main ethic groups that would go much beyond getting the foreign troops out.
It’s generally conceded, from what I’ve read over the years, that 1:15 solder/civilian ratio is the optimal ratio to totally suppress counter insurgency activities. Stretching it to 1:20 would give roughly 1 million men on the ground within Iraq. That’s the rough maths. Norway during WWII is a classicly interesting case study. Given the bloodbath of the various Russin fronts, with hindsight, the Germans who served in Norway counted themselves lucky that all they had to do was fight counter insurgencies.
But you’re right - as I noted earlier, Iraq is a wasp’s nest now filled with really venomous wasps on all sides. A million men on the ground would EVENTUALLY shut the place down - but the body bags coming home would be unbearable for at least 3 years.
But I’m not going to follow this conjecture any further because it ONLY relates to why I felt Secretary Rumsfeld was a fool in the first place. Putting a million soldiers into Iraq isn’t going to happen, and I’m not suggesting it should. Understand me very clearly on that score.
My rational bet would be for the Kurds to ‘invite’ American forces to occupy the Northern strip of Iraq (sure there are Sunnis, Turks and probably Chinese there, but that is no problem)
At the same time I would suggest that Kurdish Iraq makes an honest plea to unite with Turkey, on a federation basis - purported reason, to get into the EU. Turkey would love the oil and getting rid of the PKK would be a bonus.
My suspicion is that the UK will get out of Iraq before Harry goes there, it is just an excuse, but to be honest I could see his ‘minders’ selling him to the Shi’ites.
If we pull the troops out of Iraq, where should we send them to instead to do the most good, since just sending them home is totally out of the question?
There are solutions to control Iraq, but no ‘civilized*’ person would do what is required to make it happen. I wonder if more lives will be lost in the end by taking the ‘civilized*’ route vs. acting like the brutal dictator?
*No war is civilized. It annoys me to no end that people make rules and such to try and make it so. Maybe if we left it as dirty as it is and didn’t delude ourselves into trying to make it otherwise, it would be less likely to happen.
Great minds think alike:
“It is well that war is so terrible; else we would grow too fond of it.”
–Gen. Robert E. Lee, at the battle of Fredericksburg (1862).
Gen. Petraeus, upon whom the bitter-enders are resting all their remaining hopes, now says
And that’s even *after * the wall he’s putting up to help expedite the partitioning process, and enforce the new national boundaries, is in place.
So they’re just going to have to effin’ *deal * with it, huh? What would “winning” be at this point?
Asking “how can we win?” supposes that we have some kind of positive track record in anticipating, planning, and executing. We don’t. The totality of what we have tried so far in Iraq has not just failed to succeed, it has actually made things dramatically wrose. It’s apparent that we have no idea what the levers of Iraqi society are, let alone how to move them.
The best way to stop fucking up is simply to bail. If we even so much as think that we have a plan for victory, we should acknowledge, based on bitter experience, that our thinking is much more likely to be wrong than right. Even to think we have a plan for victory is dangerous, in other words. We should stop thinking.
That is, stay the course.
Hey, not thinking got us into this mess. It’s only fair that we make not thinking get us out of this mess.